TECH.KNOW BLOG

Soundbars VS. Sound Projectors

Jul 31, 2017

...And The Elusive Music Bar

Have you noticed how thin TV’s have gotten? When it comes to picture, the future is now! The unexpected side effect is that sound hasn’t been able to stick to the diet. Skinny TV’s created a need for sleek Soundbars. That big ol’ tube TV had plenty of space

...And The Elusive Music Bar

Have you noticed how thin TV’s have gotten? When it comes to picture, the future is now! The unexpected side effect is that sound hasn’t been able to stick to the diet. Skinny TV’s created a need for sleek Soundbars. That big ol’ tube TV had plenty of space for speakers to hide. Even the first generation of LCD and LED TV’s were a few inches thick. Sound quality slipped a little, but we almost didn’t notice. Now we are down to a few millimetres of glass. The manufacturers try to add a few small speakers, but you can’t cheat physics, and the result is a brand new market for Soundbars.

A traditional Soundbar is simply a set of speakers specifically designed to work with your sleek new TV. From the most basic examples that simply replace the TV’s speakers, to the most advanced that use premium components and incorporate wireless subwoofers; Soundbars are fundamentally giving you back quality stereo sound, often adding a centre channel for enhanced vocals.

Soundbars come in two main varieties: Powered models are the most common. A powered Soundbar incorporates its own amplifier, and usually a few preprogrammed EQ settings to tune it to your listening preferences. They are easy to setup; needing only to be plugged-in and a signal connection to the TV. Most Soundbars work best through your TV’s ‘optical out’.

The second type of Soundbar is ‘Passive’ these are usually an array of premium speakers contained in a single cabinet. Passive Soundbars do not include their own amplifiers and must be connected to a receiver which must in turn be connected to power and then to your TV. They are much more complicated to setup, but also provide the best possible sound in the category.

Sound Projectors are similar to a Soundbar only in a shape. Instead of directly replacing the speakers in your TV, they use an advanced array of drivers and special software to simulate surround sound. This category is currently dominated by Yamaha’s YSP line; the flagship of which has an unprecedented 44 speaker array contained in a single bar. A sound projector works by bouncing sound off your walls and roof to trick your ears into hearing full surround sound. The effect is impressive, but results vary heavily based on the shape of your room. The sweet-spot is often only big enough for one or two viewers. Sound projectors are perfect for apartment living, but not ideal for sharing the experience with friends.

Finally we come to a subcategory of Soundbar; what I call a Musicbar. Companies like Sonos and Paradigm have crafted Soundbars with music in mind. These upscale Musicbars are more adept at streaming your favourite stations and reproducing the subtleties of music. Music Bars trade brute force for the subtleties of song, though they are generally less punchy with movie sound effects.

There are no wrong choices when it comes to Soundbars, Projectors, and Music Bars. Almost anything will sound better than the built-in TV speakers. Just remember to always audition audio equipment before you buy... Trust your heart, only you will know which one your ears like best!

HDR & OLED VS. QLED

Is everyone enjoying the age of screens? Everything has a screen and every screen is different technology. Is it Touch, OLED, Retina, IPS? Do you know what it all means? Which is best?

Let’s take a look at the leading standards for your TV. You are on your own for your bazillion other

Is everyone enjoying the age of screens? Everything has a screen and every screen is different technology. Is it Touch, OLED, Retina, IPS? Do you know what it all means? Which is best?

Let’s take a look at the leading standards for your TV. You are on your own for your bazillion other gadgets ;-)

Let’s start with OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode). OLED is best described as a light emitting paint. Manufacturers paint the light emitting colors of Red, Green and Blue onto a TV screen. Tiny electrical connections feed power to the little dots of colour. When a dot is powered-up it emits coloured light. Varying the amount of voltage to each collection of coloured dots varies the brightness and allows for mixing of the three primary colours to display the whole rainbow.

The pigments are ‘ORGANIC’ but only in the chemical definition. They aren’t alive and aren’t particularly full of nutrition.

The strength of OLED technology is that it can be completely powered down to create true black. The result is a more precise colour gamut. Also, because it is a coating, the screens can be as flexible as the material onto which it is applied. OLED is the technology you may have seen in flexible, foldable or rollable screen demonstrations.

The weakness of OLED is that it cannot achieve the blinding brightness of quantum dot.

QLED, also known as quantum dot, is a totally different approach. QLED screens are advanced LCD screens with special layer of quantum dots that glow in one of the primary colours when energised by light. They are still lit from behind like traditional LED/LCD screens, but QLED uses the dots to refine the light into a more precise colour palette.

The strength of a QLED screen is being able to go far brighter than a traditional LCD or a new OLED panel. This is how QLED achieves the huge colour gamut.

The weakness of QLED is that, like a traditional LED/LCD screen, they can’t produce a true black. There is always a bit of the backlight bleeding through.

HDR is a new industry colour standard referring to screens that can reproduce a wider colour gamut for a more precise picture. Even some high quality LED/LCD screens are capable of HDR.

Choosing a HDR capable screen could make a more noticeable improvement to picture quality than quadrupling the pixel count with 4K/UHD. Unless we are viewing a 65inch or larger TV, most people don’t sit close enough to their screens to see pixels. (Bigger TV = bigger pixels. All screens of the same resolution use the same number of pixels to cover the surface. 720P<1080P<4K/UHD)

So what’s better? This is actually easy; even if you still don’t understand the differences. The answer lies in your room.

Is your room generally bright with a good amount of windows? The extra brightness of QLED is for you. Make sure to get a screen with HDR for the best picture quality.

Is your room generally dimmer, like a basement or a home theatre room, with light control like heavy curtains? You need OLED for those beautiful rich blacks without the blinding brightness of QLED. Once again HDR is always a good choice for the better colour dynamics.

So there you have it: Always HDR. Pick OLED screens in a dark room or QLED in a bright room.

Marley Stir It Up (turntable)

There’s no denying that vinyl has had resurgence in the past few years. There’s something magical about those big black disks silently spinning while your speakers buck and kick.

Unfortunately between vinyl’s previous hurrah and the hipster revival most of the turntable manufacturers

There’s no denying that vinyl has had resurgence in the past few years. There’s something magical about those big black disks silently spinning while your speakers buck and kick.

Unfortunately between vinyl’s previous hurrah and the hipster revival most of the turntable manufacturers closed up shop or moved-on to other things. As a result we are hardly spoiled for choice in turntables. Enthusiast gear never really dies, but what about all the young vinyl fans? It’s hard to justify $1000+ dollars when you only have a few records and your budget barely covers your dorm and daily cup-o-noodles

Bingo! The Marley Stir It Up turntable is $299 dollars, it sounds fine and because it’s built from sustainable materials, you won’t anger your ‘green’ roommate.

The Great: Styling is an obvious win for the Stir It Up. The accents are clever and styling cues are mostly from a beautiful mix of materials. The Stir It Up looks great on a shelf and can even steal the show away from more expensive gear. The platter mat is also delightfully soft and grippy.

The Good: Sound quality is good enough for new enthusiasts. The operation ticks all the boxes that make up the unique ritual of vinyl. A 33 or 45 rpm selector with a conversion insert allows you to play both vinyl formats. A built in preamp allows you to listen directly from the table via headphones or use RCA cable to feed a larger amplified system. Don’t like the preamp they provide? No problem; there is a bypass switch. Don’t like those options either? The USB port should cover most digital devices. Still can’t connect? Implausible!

The Less Good: Balancing the tonearm is nearly impossible because the bearing surfaces are slightly sticky.* It might free up with time but for now I had to crank up the anti-skate and run what I considered to be too high of a needle pressure. Even given these precautions the Stir It Up was prone to skipping at slight vibrations. The good news is that we can mitigate this by setting the unit on a solid, heavy, table. My other complaint would be the fabric dustcover. To be clear, it works fine but I would prefer an acrylic cover so I could display the artful design.

The terrible: During this review I realized I had overheated my favorite record; warping it sometime last summer when I had it on display. If you are new to vinyl, be aware of how delicate this storage medium is.

TLDR: The Marley turntable is a great option for new members of the vinyl community. It’s not perfect, but given the price, it might be perfect for your needs!

*Balancing the tonearm: tonearm balance is achieved when you set the counterweight to cause the arm to float exactly in the middle of its travel. At this point you zero the indicator on your counterweight. Once zeroed the scale should indicate the grams of down-force on your needle. Proper down-force is important to avoid scarring your records (too much), or skipping (too little). The arm on the Stir It Up does not float freely, so once I was close to floating it would stick in any position I moved it to. Because the forces involved in tonearm balancing are minute (1-5 grams depending on your cartridge), a sticky tonearm will make your records prone to skipping or scarring.

Much of the cost of a high-end turntable is due to the time it takes to carefully machine and balance the lightest and freest possible arm. Remember that vinyl is a mechanical storage medium. This means that precision hand made parts make a huge difference in how it sounds. The Stir It Up is not targeting the HiFi high-end market; It is a starter turntable to ignite the fires under new collectors and make vinyl accessible to everyone.

Audioquest: NightOwl

May 23, 2017

A little over a year ago I crowned Audioquest’s semi-open-back NightHawks the most comfortable pair of headphones EVER. In a way, they have returned as champions for 2017. Only, this pair is called the NightOwl and they are quite a bit different in every way but shape and comfort.

The

A little over a year ago I crowned Audioquest’s semi-open-back NightHawks the most comfortable pair of headphones EVER. In a way, they have returned as champions for 2017. Only, this pair is called the NightOwl and they are quite a bit different in every way but shape and comfort.

The new ‘carbon’ metallic grey finish is flawless and stunning. The frame and headband feel the same and comfort is once again remarkable. However, you switched the headband material to new synthetic leather didn’t you? It squeaks and pops as the elastic tensioners shift on my head. Yes, I could fix this with a quick dust of baby powder, and it might wear-in, but last year I don’t remember the creaking.

The biggest difference with the NightOwl is that they are closed back headphones. This changes the expansive soundstage from the NightHawk’s to a more in-head experience. As someone who often uses his headphones in a noisy office, I LIKE IT A LOT. They don’t actively cancel noise but that extra few degrees of dampening allows me to dial them in low and retreat into my own sonic space

The frequency response is once again that baffling curve where Audioquest manages to smooth out harsh treble and keep a tight bottom end without losing any fidelity. I am at a loss to explain the phenomenon. At first it feels like the track is softened. So I try to listen for lost fidelity in cymbals and high-hat. There isn’t any, so I try to feel out the bass; also solid. Everything is there in the correct measure.

After a while, I start to wonder if perhaps all my other headphones are coloring the audio and the NightOwls are the only pair presenting the track on a neutral soundstage. The listening experience is at once beautiful, flowing and utterly baffling. The only thing I can say to a prospective owner is: “give them a moment to steal your heart”. They don’t sound like you will expect, and it’s a beautiful thing. Imagine buying a supermarket apple pie and tasting it to discover they are using your grandmother’s orchard-fresh recipe. Suddenly you realize you have previously eaten many overly sweetened pies (and liked them; just not in the same way).

Finally we come to the new cable. It doesn’t grab my stubble anymore, and the microphone for taking calls is a welcome addition. Gone are the machined strain reliefs and the material textures that added je-ne-sais-quoi to the aesthetic. I liked the simple woven jacket cable from last year’s NightHawks but I respect that Audioquest is a cable expert. The new cable is tougher and it certainly reduces rustling and scuffing noises.

So ultimately what’s my impression of the NightOwls? At first, it might sound like I’m a bit conflicted. I’m not. NightOwl’s are great headphones. I loved listening to them. These are truly audiophile grade cans that I would proudly set amongst the greats.

Audiophiles are a funny bunch. The closer manufacturers get to perfection the harder we critique the minor choices. We see they can take the critique, we see they are masters of their craft; we know there must have been other considerations. We are here to remind manufacturers that some of us really, truly care as much as they do.

Sonos 2017

Mar 24, 2017

‘VERSATILE’; this word is the reason SONOS is dominating the audio market.

Before Sonos you had to pick your poison when it came to sound. You could have whole home, 2-channel, home theatre, sound bars and a million more options. BUT you had to pick one, maybe two, functions at best.

‘VERSATILE’; this word is the reason SONOS is dominating the audio market.

Before Sonos you had to pick your poison when it came to sound. You could have whole home, 2-channel, home theatre, sound bars and a million more options. BUT you had to pick one, maybe two, functions at best. Once you decided where your priorities lay, you could either cut open your walls or live with discrete bundles of wire snaking around your home. Let’s be honest, most of the time it sucked but we made it work.

Then Sonos changed the audio world. Suddenly, all you need is power and WiFi. Suddenly, a handful of reasonably sized speakers could be everything. We have talked about Sonos products before as they offer a solid line of speakers that can fill almost any audio role.

The magic of SONOS is in the app. The app is inexplicably easy to use. Once installed you have instant access to all your own content plus streaming sources. Organizing your component collection into rooms and groups is easy. Deciding to change up your layout is hardly a chore.

Sonos is all about building and adding to your collection of Sonos. The app loves them all. You can pile on Play:1s, Play:3s, Play:5s PLAYBARs and SUBs; then organize them into rooms, pair them as stereo left and right, or setup a full surround sound layout. It never feels difficult. The instant you are inspired to rework your setup you just do; no hesitation or trepidation.

Sonos is a beautiful and self-contained architecture. Extreme care has been paid to make sure each item is brilliant on its own and completely integrated into the larger Sonos universe. Their position at the top of the networked steaming speaker market is well deserved.

For those who are familiar with the Apple iProduct family; Sonos will feel very much the same. Solid well designed pieces that integrate easily with intuitive interfaces. Despite their similar philosophies Apple and Sonos are not affiliated.

If you are interested in exploring SONOS contact your local AVU for an extended demo.